


deMons

by 8ucky8arnes



Series: fragMents [3]
Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Season 2 spoilers, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 06:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16191752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8ucky8arnes/pseuds/8ucky8arnes
Summary: “What happened, Marcos? What did Evangeline say to him?”His jaw clenched.Clarice stared at him, “Marcos…what did she say?”





	deMons

Clarice frowned when she woke up to a still dark bedroom and a wet nose pressing against her cheek. She brushed Zingo back as she sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and really looking around the room, “John?”

She patted the empty space where he should’ve been, but the mattress was cold. “John?”

Clarice waited for a response, not liking the dread beginning to pool in her stomach. She reached out to turn on the lamp, slipping out of bed. She made sure to make noise as she explored the apartment, remembering just how…out of it he’d been when talking about his past and how he’d skirted her question when he’d come back from his talk with Evangeline.

He was nowhere to be found.

“Damn it.”

Zingo whined, butting her hand with her head.

She didn’t want to assume something was wrong. He often left to get some air after a particularly hard day, distance himself from the constant noise of the city. The dread sitting in the pit of her stomach said that this wasn’t one of those times.

This was something different…something _worse_.

He’d been so tense when he recalled his past, tremors going through him as ran a comforting hand over his back and his eyes had been distant in a way that had nothing to do with his abilities…how haunted he’d looked…

She looked down at the dog, “Do you know where he went, girl?”

Zingo waved her tail.

“Is that a yes?”

She barked.

Clarice was already pulling on jeans and tennis shoes, grabbing a hoodie of her own and pulling down the hood over her face. She didn’t have time for her usual precautions. She had to find John and she had to find him now.

“Come on, girl. Let’s go.”

…

Clarice had barely gotten a block before she felt like she was being followed, but she didn’t let herself react to it. Instead, she kept her pace as even as she could, not wanting the person to give chase and she didn’t want to confront them. Her eyes would give her away almost instantly…

The footfall drew closed, “Where are you going, sweetheart?”

She ignored the man, cursing her impulsiveness as she kept on walking. Clarice wasn’t sure what else she expected to happen walking alone at three in the morning and prayed she wouldn’t have to use the self-defense moves John had pushed her to learn…

“Babe, thank God you found her!”

Clarice didn’t think she’d ever been so happy to hear Marcos’ voice, she stopped when she felt his warmth soak into the side between her and the man. It was a little disconcerting to feel a body that wasn’t John’s against hers, but she smiled in faux relief, “Yeah, that power outage really freaked her out.”

They didn’t drop the charade until they turned the corner and the man walked well out of earshot.

“What the _hell_ are you doing out here without covering your marks? You could’ve been caught!”

She snorted, “ _You’re_ the one to talk.”

He pursed his lips, “Does John know you’re out here?”

Clarice nearly brushed off her hood, running a hand down her face with a sigh, “No, that would require him being in the apartment when I left… So are you going to help me find him or are you just going to keep asking questions?”

His expression shifted and he said nothing.

She frowned, “Would this have anything to do with the talk you all had with Evangeline?”

He looked away for just a second and Clarice knew she wasn’t far off the mark.

Clarice felt a protective anger rise in her as she remembered just how quiet he got when he told her about his first meeting with the woman: the fight clubs, the pills, how he’d been chained to the bed as he went through the painful process of detox…

_“That was the worst time of my life.” His voice shook as he buried his head in the pillow, eyes squeezed shut for only a second, “But she got me through it.”_

_She gently ran a hand through his hair, “Well, if she did it once, she can do it again. Right?”_

_His gaze was somber as he looked at her, “If she even talks to me after Atlanta.”_

That event had affected him deeply and seeing her again no doubt brought everything rushing to the surface, including those lingering doubts. She knew how devastated he’d been when he’d found out HQ was gone, after Lorna tore apart the plane, after people he considered family turned away from him…he saw himself as unworthy of the position he’d been chosen for. Unworthy to lead. “What happened, Marcos? What did Evangeline say to him?”

His jaw clenched.

Clarice stared at him, “Marcos… _what did she say_?”

“She said there was a war coming and that with…Lorna and Andy gone, the Underground didn’t have that power.” He leaned back against the side of the building, letting out a long breath before he continued, “She didn’t want a repeat of his last failure… didn’t want him destroying the rest of what had been built.”

She flinched at the words, “What else?”

“I don’t know. He told Caitlyn and me to go back to the car while he went back to talk to her.” His face softened, eyes dropping the cracked sidewalk beneath them, “He didn’t say anything on the way back and I wasn’t too keen on pushing him.”

Clarice nodded, “Do you have any idea where he might be at?”

“Maybe back at the shop? It deserted at night.”

Looking both ways, she ducked into an alley and pulled open a portal.

Zingo jumped through it immediately, barked, and came back.

She looked at Marcos, who only shook his head.

“Just bring him back alright?”

She nodded, waiting until Marcos held onto Zingo before closing the portal behind her. She didn’t need to worry about both of them… Clarice looked around the dark lot full of empty metal for cars and trucks and various other vehicles alike.

She ignored the ever-worsening rain as she walked through walls of off crushed metal, listening for anything that could give her a better location. The sounds of rain pattering on glass and metal were constant, the moisture softening the ground under her feet.

Lightning illuminated her way in flashes and she paused when she heard a bang.

She cocked her head to the side. _Thunder?_

_Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang._

Clarice bent down, picking up an old tire jack before walking slowly in the direction of the sound. The noise was too rhythmic to be thunder, too loud to be anything other than something solid striking something hollow…

It was the choked off scream that froze her. _John?_

Dropping the tire jack, she ran in the direction of the sound.

She skidded to a stop when she finally saw him, eyes wide.

The noise she’d heard was his fists striking the side of an old school bus, the depth of the dents in the metal telling her that he’d been at it for a while. He didn’t look her direction at all…hadn’t acknowledged her presence in any way and her heart broke in her chest.

She’d seen this anger in small instants: the cracked plastic on the steering wheels, the shattered glasses, the broken edges of the counter… Clarice knew that those were only small pieces off the wall he put up between it and everything else…but this? This anger, this _rage_ …it was like a dam had broken loose, unleashing wave after wave of fists and screaming.

She wanted nothing more to run up to him, wrap her arms around him and pull him back, but with how little he seemed to register his surroundings, that had the definite possibility of going real bad real quick. Instead, she approached him slowly like a wounded animal and spoke to him at a normal volume, “John?”

A crash of thunder muffled her voice, his fists striking the metal again and again…

She swallowed, wiping the water from her face as she took another step closer. “John?”

No reaction.

Clarice cleared her throat, ready to just yell at him, when she saw his hands.

What she thought was mud at a distance was actually _blood_ , dripping from his hands and smeared across the dented metal with every hit. Her stomach dropped to the ground at the realization that he was _hurting_ himself and whether or not it was intentional, she had to stop him now. “John!”

His head snapped up and a chill when through her as lightning illuminated eyes wild with pain… with _panic_ , sucking in a sharp breath as she very nearly took a step back. She hated how afraid she was of him in that split second, “It’s me, John. It’s Clarice.”

He blinked, staggering back into the bus as he immediately turned away.

“John-”

“You…” he rested his head back against the grimy windows, “you shouldn’t be here.”

“John, look at me.”

“No,” he closed his eyes, “you need to go.”

Clarice shook her head, “I’m not _leaving_ you, John.”

He flinched away from her as fingers grazed his knuckles, his expression pained. “You should.”

She frowned, recognizing the defeat in his voice. Between that and the blood, Clarice didn’t like the picture her mind was painting. The pain that he’d described earlier that day had never been elaborated on and at first she thought it was from all the fighting, but looking at him now…that wasn’t all of it.

John caused himself physical pain because it was easier to process than the anger and the grief…

“But I’m not going to because you’re hurting.” She came to stand in front of him, grabbing gently onto his wrists. Clarice could feel the rapid pulse underneath the rain-slicked skin and the constant heat that radiated off him even in a torrential downpour. “I’m never going to leave you.  I’m never going to doubt you.” She tightened her grip, trying to catch his gaze for even a second, “I’m never going to stop loving you, John Proudstar. Nothing in your past, present, or future is going to change that.”

He dropped his head onto shoulders, arms pulling her hard against him.

She said nothing more when he fell to his knees, covering them both in mud, or when he clung to her so tightly there would no doubt be bruises come morning. She held him until his shoulders stopped shaking and his hold loosened, pulling away just enough, “Let’s go back to bed, change into something warm and get those hands cleaned up?”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her neck, “I didn’t mean to-”

“I know.” She managed a smile as she got to her feet, “Now come on you big lug, I can’t carry you and make a portal all by myself.”

His lips twitched as he stood and while it may have been such a small thing, Clarice could see some of that light return to his eyes. She knew that they would have to talk about everything that had just transpired, about his demons coming to the surface and her impromptu confession in the pouring rain, but for now, she was just happy to have him with her.

Tomorrow would be a new day.

She _had_ to believe that.  


End file.
